/SotDL/ - Shadow of the Demon Lord General

It's time we had a Shadow of the Demon Lord General

Mind the edge edition.


What's your favorite build?

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findgamers.us/sotdl-npcs
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I don’t have a favorite build as I am a forever GM and will never get to play it, but this game has become my favorite go to fantasy game.
There is nothing I don’t love about it and I’ve easily gotten my group hooked on it.
I can’t wait to finish up this game we’re running so we can start a post apocalyptic one using the godless book.
And then for that one to finish so we can do a Freeport game.
Happy to see it mentioned in the sea of hate, D&D, and 40K that is much of tg.

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My only real gripe with it would be all the small PDF releases. They’re all solid, but I prefer to have a book in front of me, especially if it’s something I’m running.
I’d murder many babies for some of that shit to get collected into an anthology book of some sort.

I got recommended this game without explanation or exposition. I have yet to crack open the pdf I acquired.

could either of you tell me about or sell me on this system/setting?

I've played it for a while, and I have to say it is a very elegant system.
>Only uses d20 and d6s
>Uses career paths rather than classes, thus shutting down multiclass cheese
>Magic is split into many, many schools, thus allowing for themed builds without giving up power.
>Stats are low and modifiers are simple. Skill checks are 10 and nothing really higher.
>Boon/Bane system is simple - roll a d6 with your d20 and add/subtract depending. If you have more than 1 then you take the highest.
>Setting is pretty damn grimdark in the style of the mythos - you can't beat the DL, but you can hold him off.
>World feels like it's just on the cusp of the Renaissance, with crude, rare and expensive firearms existing alongside clockwork men and typical weapons.

It's good is what I'm saying.

I've been interested in this game for awhile now but I'm having a hard time understanding it reading the rulebook. Any decent explanation, or videos on how it actually plays? I think I get the individual mechanics on paper but I can't really see how it fits together.

You can also easily flip a few switches and make it less grimdark, if you so choose. The system is so modular that you can apply to just about any kind of fantasy setting you want.

I view it as resource management.

You only have so much healing, only so many spells per day. Healing potions are few and far in between. Novice classes give you a special way to heal, but that can only be used once or twice max. Do you take a fast turn now, or slow? Does the money you found in a forsaken dungeon go towards your quality of life, or vital equipment for the next adventure?

It's not just good for dungeon crawling - it's also good for a more social game. CoC style, pulp, GoT simulator - these are all valid. Players are not all powerful, and there are no options that smash the game completely open at all.

Favourite build?
That's a tough one. I'd hoped to become a druid at one time, but the character died. I love the idea of Magician-Wizard-Magus, just as a generalist mage with a cool staff.

Going Priest - Cleric - Astromancer was interesting. Since somebody else had Life, I chose Theurgy and Celestial, worshipping the New God. Getting an extra 2d6 to my Celestial spell damage was pretty fucking good.

It presupposes a world that is basically already doomed. It’s a pre apocalyptic game. Some groups play to avert the end times, but I prefer to just have the world irredeemably fucked and have the adventurers have to deal with that on top of whatever else they get up to.
The Demon Lord is trying to break into the world and devour it, which has some unsettling effects on things that can vary from game to game.
The setting itself is fleshed out just enough with plenty left blank for individual game masters to be able to insert whatever they want without too much trouble.
It is pretty grimdark, being basically a bit of a love letter to the old WHFRPG. So there’s beastmen, and mutations, and cults a plenty. With a hefty dose of lovecraftian stuff in there too.

The mechanics are simple and elegant with a decent variety still. It’s basically roll a d20 vs a static TN of 10 (for skill checks and the like) or vs a relevant ability score (for attacks. Defense for physical, willpower or intelligence for mental attacks and sanity rending, agility for reaction stuff).
For any edges you have in a given situation (like high ground, or the right tool) you may get a boon or two to your roll, and any hindrances (like distance, cover, or being freaked the fuck out) will give you banes. Boons and banes cancel each other out on a one to one basis. You’ll never have both. For each boon/babe you roll that many d6 with your d20 and either add the highest (boons) or subtract (banes).
The way the character paths work is beautiful. You start as a zero level nobody. Then, if you survive, you pick a base class at level one (priest, warrior, rogue, or magician). As you level you will pick from an increasing number of sub classes, resulting in a staggering amount of variations.
Also, there’s no tracking of experience. You level (from 0-10) after each adventure. Making it great for shorter campaigns. Although you can slow that down if that’s not to your liking.

What in particular are you having problems with. It’s a decently simple system and I’d be happy to walk you through some of it in more depth if you can narrow my focus a bit

Does anyone here have any at the table experience with the assasin and in particular the assasinate ability there of?
Just wondering how often it actually works and if it’s caused any issues with steamrolling encounters.

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Players were super excited once the assassin ability showed up in game, but by that time encounters were already past the slap each other until death, and still required good tactics for the players to stay alive.
Don't forget the healing rate system. That's one of the most slap my forehead it's so simple parts of the system imo.

All my players and pool of potential players get tired of the over the top doom and gloom and horrifying creatures. What other settings have you used this system for?

I'm putting together a setting that's a basically fantasy gold rush era, but instead of the west coast its based in Fantasy Pandora. Dropping corruption, making Insanity easier to drop with a counter mechanic that works the complete opposite called "Purpose".

Too many cool builds to even consider playing one character. I wish someone ran a lighter-mood version of SotDL (real fucking easy to do) with some kinda 'Adventurer's Guild' where the party can park their alts whenever.

But my all-time favourite is probably the Naga Tormentor. It's a bit of a broken stunlock build, it doesn't work against mobs that are immune to being frightened, but it's fun.

I was even contemplating uppblandning all those small PDFs into few big ones in an editor, but was too lazy to actually do it.

It depends on the DM. The rules for the hidden state are explained on the page 49 of the core book. They cover cases of non-magical hiding.
The Sanctuary spell from the Protection tradition allows an ally to hide you, no rolls, standard cast cost.
Also Rune of Concealment lets an ally hide you, even from magic senses, but it's a delayed effect and you can't move.
I believe, for the core book, these are the only mechanical options to become hidden. All in all, I would say that Assassinate is unreliable against huge monsters, magic monsters with magic senses, high INT (and consequently PER) foes, and it almost always requires you to take the slow turn meaning that if the foe succeeds at its STR roll (and for lvl5+ foes it usually means flat 70-80% chance, and you can't influence this roll anyhow) you will probably get punched in the face or have to use the fast turn next round to run away, which is a great tempo killer.
I don't see how it turns out to be a problem if the DM knows the system even half-decently.

You can remove paths and traditions at your will really. Because the books use consistent keywording throughout, any references to the deleted parts should be easily traceable.
You might want to remove the grimdark mechanics like Corruption, but they're kinda too well-integrated, and I'd rather refluff them into some other adverse effect than go through every ability/spell that uses them.

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It's a bit like dnd, but one of my players hates dnd and still likes this game. It does grimdark adventuring pretty well, and so far it doesn't feel like wizards are that much more powerful than martials. And even so there is a huge variety of classes (paths) to play so you can always pick up some magic if you feel the need to.

We ran a short game using the godless book as a framework for a fallout based thing. Refluffed goblins as ghouls, orcs as super mutants, the advanced clockworks as synths, ditched the dwarves. Minimal magic was fluffed as some hi tech weapons and devices.
It was pretty fun. Didn’t really use as much of the horror stuff. The system is flexible enough to mold whatever you need for the most part.

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What novice level adventures would you guys recommend? I have heard good things about the well and zombie one, but they both look a little bit too lethal for my tastes

Well they are all potentially damn lethal. Such is the life of a zero level character. SotDL rewards cautious and intelligent players and punishes brash and foolish ones, especially at the lowest levels.
The only premade adventure I’ve used for starting characters is Survival of the Fittest. I like it because, as a small hex crawl, it can vary wildly in outcomes and lethality. I’ve run it a couple of times with different groups and each time it’s played out remarkably different.
Remember: a tactical retreat is sometimes the best strategy.
Remind your players.

Also, I recommend making sure everyone understands that PC death WILL happen eventually. It’s unwise to get too attached to any one character.

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That’s good to hear. I was worried tha our sneaky little goblin was going to just murder everyone instantly. I kinda forgot about the strength check though.

But, if the enemy is also surprised, they auto fail challenge rolls right? So if they get real ambushy then at least one guy is getting auto killed, yeah?

>I don’t have a favorite build as I am a forever GM and will never get to play it
spending all day thinking of builds I will never use is suffering

>tfw pic related never ever

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I'm fairly interested in it, especially since it cribs so hard from 5e that any of my players that I'd introduce would instantly grok it. For starting adventures, has anyone tried using any of the DCC Funnel adventures for it? I think Sailors of the Starless Sea would be really fun in SotDL.

How do I create my own Ancestries? After looking at the ones released so far, there is clearly a pattern but I can't figure it out or how ability scores are costed vs special abilities.

This is correct. It basically auto-kills on surprise. Still, against strong enemies I definitely wouldn't allow the autokill or them to be surprised at least.

It's a VERY flavorful ability though and in the hands of a good player can be used expertly.

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I try to remind my players even in games like 13th Age and D&D that PCs can and will die eventually. There's no way around it, unless I fudge dice heavily (I don't), sometimes things shake out badly for someone.

Also sometimes PCs make stupid fucking decisions that will get them killed, thems the brakes. But SotDL heavily punishes really stupid decisions.

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The special abilities don't have a set cost it appears. But one good rule of thumb is that if a special ability will affect combat in a meaningful way then it will likely modify stats as well.

Sylph are a good race to look at. Their Whirling Evasion is extremely powerful for damage reduction and melee combat. But they have their STR score lowered accordingly meaning they have less health and are less likely to be melee combatants.

Think about what the special ability does and how it affects playstyles.

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>pure combat crawl
>no immersion or roleplay
>bare minimum worldbuilding effort even in published adventures
>most it does it talk about how 55% of races have a shit fetish/throw their shit/worship their semen/shit their entrails out

I ran survival of the fittest and it went well. I streamlined hex crawling a bit, only making them roll for travel if they changed direction or had an encounter of any kind.

I had 4 players and one did die. I had him get a new character from a captive of the bandits.

The system flowed beautifully.

Pure combat crawl... I guess. If you play it that way. There is literally nothing in the book that implies this. There’s actually a bunch of non combat spells. There’s also systems for social interaction if you use that sort of thing.
No immersion or roleplay... again, if you decide to play that way. I have no idea where you are getting that.
Minimum world building... true, but I think that’s to allow people to insert their own stuff without messing with “canon”.
Gross stuff...yeah. It’s there. It’s a gross game. Change that if you aren’t into it. Simple.

Sounds like you either have zero experience with the game or you have a very shitty GM. I mean, seriously, no immersion or roleplay? That’s on the group, not the game.

>Everything sounds like shit
>When you describe it like an asshole
>In this format

I haven’t tried, but I don’t imagine it would be too difficult. Once you get the system it’s easy to design or improv adversaries and obstacles. Sailors would be a really good one to use and I think I may try that sometime. DCC is my second favorite fantasy game behind SotDL these days. And that’s undeniably one of the best funnels. Thanks for the idea.

He's a troll or a retard, probably both.

Also man, I don't know where the fuck these people come from who need their setting spelled out for them and made for them. Even D&D doesn't do that shit unless you get a whole bunch of modules. I know most OSR doesn't give super detailed setting shit either. Is it like PbtA games?

Agreed. Who doesn’t like building their own shit in the game world? I’ll never understand why tabletop RPGs appeal to people with such limited imagination. It’s a game firmly based on playing pretend. How can you play make believe if you need a book to tell you what can or can’t imagine?

And we were having such a cozy thread up till now...

Is there any PC/NPC generator online tool where you can choose lvl, paths, magics, equips and it spills a formatted character sheet?

Would I be able to develop one and make it available online without worrying about copyright issues?

I've not seen one. Youd probably be fine as long as it included no art and just the names of paths and ancestries without the written rules or stats. Afterall there's no copyright on a Dwarf Assassin or whatever. The equipment is also fine probably.

Spells are iffier. I'd prob leave them out. But maybe naming paths wouldn't be bad.

Yeah I don't think there's anything particularly grimdark in the system itself, other than some tables the DM can use as inspiration. Oh and a few spells.

findgamers.us/sotdl-npcs
Just found this one linked directly from the official site. It works, but it's missing a lot of content and options.

I was aiming to something more like orcpub2.com is for DnD

Guess I'll just keep it to myself. Any chance SotDL goes OGL?

I'M GOING TO MAKE A CASUAL BABIES RIP OFF OF SotDL, ADD ANIME AND IDENTITY POLITICS PANDERING, AND STICK AN OPEN LICENSE ON IT. AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT HAHAHAH.

Awesome. Make sure to link it on tg when you're done. Thank you for your contribution to the hobby.

Have fun duderoni

Can someone explain to me how to use the encounter difficulty table? The example numbers they give you make no sense.

Is the encounter difficulty table for a full party of 4? Just one person?